Bifurcate buffer

ABSTRACT

A buffer includes a plurality of serial inputs, a plurality of de-serializers, each coupled to a respective input, a plurality n of buffers and a media access controller having inputs coupled to the plurality of de-serializers, data outputs coupled to the buffers, and two control outputs coupled to respective buffers for buffering input data at a clock rate one-nth that of the input data. Preferably the buffer is a bifurcate buffer. In operation, serial packets are received on a port. They must be converted to parallel data for processing by conventional CMOS logic, however there are limits serial to parallel conversion ratio. This buffer describe circumvents theses limits.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of co-pending U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/870,868, filed on Dec. 20, 2006, by the same inventor, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to bifurcate buffers and is particularly concerned with very high speed switch buffers.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, PCIe 2.0 specifies 5.0 Gigbit/s symbol rate per lane. Multiple lanes can be used to fabricate larger port bandwidths. For example, ×4 port would have an aggregate symbol rate of 20 G, and a bit rate of 16 G, 8b10b coding is used. A ×8 port would have an aggregate symbol rate of 40 G, and a bit rate of 32 G. There are other serial interconnect protocols, for example serial rapid IO and Ethernet that have similar properties. This disclosure will focus on PICe, but is not limited to that protocol.

Referring to FIG. 1, there is illustrated a PCIe packet. The diagram is copied from PCIe specification. The PCIe packet 10 includes a framing byte 12, a two-byte sequence number 14, a header 16, data 18, a 4-byte ECRC 20, a 4-byte LCRC 22 and a final framing byte 24, all of which form a physical layer 26. The two-byte sequence number 14, the header 16, data 18, the 4-byte ECRC 20, and the 4-byte LCRC 22 form a data link layer 27. The header 16, data 18 and the 4-byte ECRC 20 form a transaction layer 28. The data 18 and the 4-byte ECRC 20 are optional, hence are shown in dashed line.

The numbers of bytes (actually a 10 bit symbol on the serial link) is shown in FIG. 1. The framing bytes, start 12 and stop 24 can be discarded by the internal logic as they are only useful for synchronizing the link to the symbol time at the receiver. The sequence number 14 only exists on the link. This is only useful to the data link layer 27, to assure that all packets are received, and in order. Although the LCRC 22 (link CRC) is valid for the link, it can be useful to monitor data integrity through a switch, or other such device.

The simplest way to convert this serial packet to a parallel bus for on chip processing is shown in FIG. 2. The 10-bit symbols at 5 G/s are converted to 8-bit data at 500 Mbits/s by SERDES (serialize/de-serialize) 30. Note that the start of packet (SOP) must always occur on lane 0. The parallel data is written 32 into a data buffer, running at the same clock rate as the 500 M byte rate. It may be feasible to implement the MAC at a clock rate of 500 MHz in 90 nm The read side of the buffer, connecting to a large internal switch fabric (ISF), will not be feasible to implement at 500 MHz clock rate. Two minimum size packets are shown 32 to consume six clock ticks, and only take four ticks to write into the data buffer 36, 38.

It is possible to have a serialize/de-serialize (SERDES) 30 that creates 16-bit wide data lanes running at half the speed. The issue then is that two packets may exist at the same time on the same clock tick. Memory management would required that different packets occupy different memory locations.

When a port bifurcates, prior art methods typically instantiate another buffer for that port. This buffer is wasted when a single 1×8 port is used.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An object of the present invention is to provide an improved bifurcate buffer.

In accordance with an aspect of the present invention there is provided a bifurcate buffer comprising a plurality of serial inputs, a plurality of de-serializers, each coupled to a respective input, a plurality n of buffers and a media access controller having inputs coupled to the plurality of de-serializers, data outputs coupled to the buffers, and two control outputs coupled to respective buffers for buffering input data at a clock rate one-nth that of the input data.

In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is provided a A bifurcate buffer comprising a plurality of serial inputs, a plurality of de-serializers, each coupled to a respective input, two buffers and a media access controller having inputs coupled to the plurality of de-serializers, data outputs coupled to the buffers, and two control outputs coupled to respective buffers for buffering input data at a clock rate one-half that of the input data.

In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention there is provided a A bifurcate buffer comprising a plurality of serial inputs, a plurality of de-serializers, each coupled to a respective input, two buffers and two media access controllers each having inputs coupled to one-half the plurality of de-serializers, data outputs coupled to the buffers, and a control output coupled to respective buffers for buffering input data at a clock rate one-half that of the input data.

By paralleling the data to wider widths and creating separate memories more effective use of buffers is made.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention will be further understood from the following detailed description with reference to the drawings in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates a PCIe packet;

FIG. 2 illustrates a simple way to convert the serial packet of FIG. 1 to a parallel bus;

FIG. 3 illustrates a bifurcate buffer in accordance with a first embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 illustrates a bifurcate buffer in accordance with a second embodiment of the present invention;

FIGS. 5 a and 5 b illustrate packet flow for the bifurcate buffer of FIG. 3;

FIGS. 6 a and 6 b illustrate packet flow for the bifurcate buffer of FIG. 4; and

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of memory management for the bifurcate buffers.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

Referring to FIG. 3 there is illustrated a bifurcate buffer in accordance with a first embodiment of the present invention. The 1×8 bifurcate buffer 40 includes a media access controller (MAC) 42 receiving input from serializer/de-serializer (SERDES) 30 and outputting-four 16-bit wide lanes to each of x64 RAM 44 and 46, controlled by lines 48 a and 48 b, respectively.

In operation, the data is written into two-x64 250 MHz dual port RAM 44 and 46. The memory management generates different addresses for each bank.

Referring to FIG. 4 there is illustrated a bifurcate buffer in accordance with a second embodiment of the present invention. The 2×4 bifurcate buffer 50 includes a first media access controller (MAC) 42 receiving input from serializer/de-serializer (SERDES) 30 and outputting four 16-bit wide lanes to x64 RAM 44, controlled by line 48 a. The 2×4 bifurcate buffer 50 also includes a second media access controller (MAC) 52 receiving input from the lower four serializer/de-serializer (SERDES) 30 and outputting four 16-bit wide lanes to x64 RAM 54, controlled by line 56. Hence, in this example the 1×8 port 30 can bifurcate to 2×4 ports.

In operation, the upper ×8 MAC 42 is configured to run in ×4 mode. Here each buffer 44 and 54 is managed by its respective MAC 42 and 52.

Referring to FIGS. 5 a and 5 b, there is illustrated packet flow for the bifurcate buffer of FIG. 3. The packet flow for 1×8 mode is shown. We can see that the two packets come in to the MAC 42 on three clock ticks 60 a and 60 b, and are written 62 a and 62 b in to the buffers 44 in three clock ticks 64 a and 64 b. The second clock tick contains data from two different packets. The framing bytes, start 12 and stop 24 and the sequence number 14 can now be discarded 66 a and 66 b by the internal logic.

Referring to FIGS. 6 a and 6 b, there is illustrated packet flow for the bifurcate buffer of FIG. 4. The packet flow for 2×4 mode is shown. We can see that the two packets, on each port 42 and 52, come in on six clocks ticks 70 a and 70 b, and are written 72 a and 72 b in to buffers 44 and 54 in six clock ticks 74 a and 74 b. The framing bytes, start 12 and stop 24 and the sequence number 14 can now be discarded 76 a and 76 b by the internal logic, as is padding bytes 78.

Referring to FIG. 7, there is illustrated an example of memory management for the bifurcate buffers of FIGS. 3 and 4. The memory management scheme is described below. The underlying scheme is a link list 80 of 64 byte blocks. This scheme is well known by those skilled in the art. The actual sizes are a function of cost/performance trade offs; this is simply a typical example.

In 1×8 mode two packet pointers 82 and 84 index each packet. The 8-bit pointer also has another bit to indicate which pointer contains the first portion of the packet. This way packets can be pulled out of the buffer in order. The packet pointers are stored in a FIFO (in this example).

In 2×4 mode the packet pointer FIFOs 82 and 84 are independent.

The free lists 80 are in one physical memory, but logically contain pointers to its respective packet buffer.

The preceding, example describes a ×8 5 Gig PICe port that can bifurcate to 2×4 5 Gig PCIe ports. The present embodiment can be adapted to other speeds, port segmentations for example quad-furcation, and protocols, to provide the benefit there from.

Numerous modifications, variations and adaptations may be made to the particular embodiments described above without departing from the scope patent disclosure, which is defined in the claims. 

1. A buffer comprising: a plurality of serial inputs; a plurality of de-serializers, each coupled to a respective input; a plurality n of buffers; and a media access controller having inputs coupled to the plurality of de-serializers, data outputs coupled to the buffers, and two control outputs coupled to respective buffers for buffering input data at a clock rate one-nth that of the input data.
 2. A buffer as claimed in claim 1 wherein n is two.
 3. A buffer as claimed in claim 2 wherein the media access controller and buffers are configured as a 1×8 port.
 4. A buffer as claimed in claim 2 wherein the media access controller and buffers are configured as two 2×4 ports.
 5. A bifurcate buffer comprising: a plurality of serial inputs; a plurality of de-serializers, each coupled to a respective input; two buffers; and a media access controller having inputs coupled to the plurality of de-serializers, data outputs coupled to the buffers, and two control outputs coupled to respective buffers for buffering input data at a clock rate one-half that of the input data.
 6. A bifurcate buffer as claimed in claim 5 wherein the media access controller and buffers are configured as a 1×8 port.
 7. A bifurcate buffer comprising: a plurality of serial inputs; a plurality of de-serializers, each coupled to a respective input; two buffers; and two media access controllers each having inputs coupled to one-half the plurality of de-serializers, data outputs coupled to the buffers, and a control output coupled to respective buffers for buffering input data at a clock rate one-half that of the input data.
 8. A bifurcate buffer as claimed in claim 7 wherein the media access controllers and buffers are configured as two 2×4 ports. 